


I Will Ask You For Mercy

by ceann_cinnidh



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Original Character Death(s), So much angst, im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 15:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11015826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceann_cinnidh/pseuds/ceann_cinnidh
Summary: A disordered collection of the life and times of Jesse-Lee Dixon, post-end of the world.-THIS FIC IS UNDER MAJOR REWORKS: Every chapter will be rewritten, reposted, a whole lot of new chapters added, and fluffed up for all of you because I just reread this and holy shit i'm so sorry. By the time i'm done (which will be chrismas at the latest) it'll make a lot more sense and will be a lot more enjoyable to read. If you liked this the first time round, buckle in for a whole new ride, and if you didn't, I hope you will this time. Watch this space.





	1. Lend Us a Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This OC has been bubbling away in my head for years and i finally decided to try and put something on paper so please be gentle. These are just a few snippets ive been able to get down, hopefully part of a bigger project I'm working on.

“Glenn,” Blood. So much blood. There was a chunk of flesh missing from the inside of his forearm, gushing with the hot crimson liquid, not thick enough to hide the tooth marks. How had it happened? He’d been fine, ten walkers? They’d done thirty before, had he missed one? “Glenn?” The group of five turned to look at him, and he saw the horror wash across their faces before they began to tip out of his sight. Glenn darted forward, Maggie close behind, but their figures were dizzying. He was falling. Glenn’s strong arms caught him before he hit the tarmac, but it was barely registered under the sharp sting, the scolding burn, the throbbing, pulsing, pain.

“Oh my god, Jesse, just, just-“

“Glenn?” The sky was empty of clouds today. It made him feel odd. Glenn and Maggie appeared around the edges of his sight, distant and doubled.

“Just breathe, okay, just breathe, it’s going to be fine! You’re fine! It’s okay!” Glenn’s face obscured his view of the peculiar sky, and like opening floodgates, everything whooshed back into focus. He was bitten, he was dying, oh my god, he was going to bleed to death on the road, oh god Daryl-

“Glenn you have to find him, find Daryl, _please_!” His limp hands tried to grip onto Glenn’s shirt, but they weren’t working right and _why wouldn’t his hands work right_? Everything was tingling. Maggie, Maggie was crying. His head lolled to the side, and he could see her hand trembling around his numb bicep. Was he yelling? He couldn’t tell, but his throat was raw so he must have been. He was looking at the sky again. There were no clouds, _why weren’t there clouds_? It was so peculiar, and he was washed with a kind of urgency he couldn’t place. “Find him, find Daryl.” Was that him talking? Everything sounded so far away, he just wanted to sleep.

“No, no, see we’re going to find him together,” Glenn? “You, and me and Maggie! We’ll all find him together!” The faces above him felt so very hollow, like they were just masks. Jesse felt like he was floating.

“You have to tell him- tell him I- tell him-“

“No, no, no, you’re going to tell him yourself! Okay? Jesse-Lee! Jesse?” This was a dream. It had to be. What if – what if it was _all_ a dream? What if he was dying way back in that house outside Atlanta, and this was just his mind trying to hold on longer, hold on by inventing people he cared about like Glenn and Maggie and D-

Daryl.

“I don’t even know if he’s alive.” The thought quietly slipped through his lips. He didn’t like the sky when it was empty – why was it so empty?

“No, J don’t think like that! You’re going to be fine, I promise! Maggie, hurry up!” See, he was aware of the hot wetness over his arm, and somewhere in his mind he knew that that was bad, but nothing was making the connections anymore.

“He’s going to bleed out!” Whose voice was that? Familiar, but he didn’t recognise it.

“Shut up, shut up!” Glenn? Why was Glenn upset like that? No one upset his family. He felt a surge of defiance in his throat.

“Don’t listen to him, Jesse-Lee, hold on okay? For Daryl! Just-“

The sky was ever so empty.

“You need to do it! Now!”

He didn’t like it.

“Maggie!”

Why?

“Now!”

 

\--- 

 

It was an uncomfortable feeling; being aware that your mind was awake, but not being able to cajole it beyond the dark fog. It felt like his fingers were just able to breach the surface of freezing water, but the sea weed around his ankles held him from going any further. Jesse didn’t know how long he was suspended in the cold lonely limbo, but it felt like an eternity.

An eternity, yet somehow when his eyes finally opened it felt like he’d spent barely a moment in the dark.

His eyes blinked apart a few times, but the hazy shapes in his sight were nothing more than insignificant blurs. Sounds infiltrated the muffled silence in his ears, but barely – like when he and Daryl were children and they used to hunt secrets, barely hearing words through the doors.

One voice, clear and crystalline cut through the smog. “Jesse-Lee?” It was Maggie. The pictures above him got clearer and he could discern her face. “Thank god.”

“M’gie?”

The darkness swallowed him again before he could cling his nails into consciousness. He was alone once more.

 

\--- 

 

He wasn’t underwater anymore. He was beneath the night sky. They were lying in the flatbed of Daryl’s truck on opened out sleeping bags in the middle of the woods.

This was a memory, except it wasn’t a memory because when this had happened he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from Daryl’s face to look at the stars. Now, in his head, no matter how hard he tried, his neck refused to move to allow him to look at his love. This, most definitely, was worse than being beneath the cold black sea. He could feel Daryl at his side, smell his skin, almost see the outline of his face in his peripheral.

Jesse just wanted to look at him.

He felt like crying, because who knew when this would end and he’d be alone once more?

The sky above them was empty – that hadn’t actually been the case in reality. It was an expanse of barren blackness now though, no moon, no stars, not even a hint of a cloud. He just wanted to look into Daryl’s eyes.

It felt like months not being able to move, not being able to reach out and touch Daryl, not being able to hold him, when the man spoke. “Look, Jess.” Daryl’s rough hand reached up above the both of them pointing, “Shooting star.”

Jesse-Lee saw no such thing. What he did see was eyes, enormous and warm and dark brown opening up in the empty dark sky. They were looking down at him. Glenn’s, his mind placed, Glenn’s eyes in the sky.

It felt like a God was peering down into his very soul (he always knew Glenn would make a good Jesus).

The sky seemed to peel away to reveal more of his face, eventually swallowing the skyline and the truck fell away beneath him taking Daryl away with it and –

“Jess? C’mon man, Jesse, say something!”

The black of Glenn’s irises spilt into a monstrous flood, blotching away the light his face had brought until everything around him was black again.

Alone.

 

\--- 

 

“You know he’s not going to make it?” Abraham rolled the words around his cigar, hanging unlit from his mouth. The man sat a distance away and on behalf of the sleeping Glenn and Maggie, Tara tossed him a defiant look.

“Glenn said he’s a fighter.” She went back to blotting his fevered forehead with a rag.

“Seen plenty of fighters die out here. Fighter, doesn’t always mean survivor.”

“That’s exactly what it means.” Tara quickly bit out – she didn’t want Abraham to lead the conversation into dangerous waters. She knew what dead weight was and she recognised the look it was usually met with on Abraham’s face.

Maggie said the fever was normal though, that it happened a lot with DIY amputations, and that there was no way what so ever that it was a walker infection. Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene left it that, but maybe it was more to do with the gun in her arms than anything else.

Whatever was going to happen to Jesse-Lee, Tara had to prove her worth, pay her debt, she would show Glenn that she was a good person. She just hoped she could show Jesse too.

 

\---

 

_You know that’s a really weird thing to hate, right?_

_I’m aware Dixon, but I can’t help it!_

_Okay._

_Stop laughing!_

_I’m sorry, it’s just – the empty sky?_

_I know, I know, but it’s just… Everything feels so hollow when there aren’t any clouds in the sky. I feel- alone. Nothing feels quite right, like everything’s so isolated. Exposed, I guess. I dunno, it just feels-_

_Wrong?_

_Yeah._

_You’re crazy._

_You love me anyway._

_Damn it, you’re right. But is that why you like the rain?_

_Well, actually that has a lot more to do with you and wet t-shirts and those wonderful abs right there._

_Is that right, princess?_

_I love you Daryl._

_I love you too Jess-Lee._

 

\---

 

“Glenn?”

“Rosita, we’ve been over this, we are not leaving-“

“ _Glenn_! I think he’s waking up.”


	2. He's a Cowboy

"Hey man," Jesse-Lee gripped Carl's shoulder as he walked by, but on seeing Carl’s face, he seemed to rethink whatever he was doing. "You alright?" There was a sour look on his maturing face and in the old world that look would mean parents or girls. This wasn't the old world.

"Do you ever miss your gun?" Carl asked as he looked up at Jesse-Lee from under his hat, with a difficult to read expression on his face. The brisk question stumped Jesse a little but he was quick to recover.

"Do you?"

"Yeah... It feels wrong without it. The world's still a bad place but we're in here, putting away our guns and having story times pretending like we can make it better!"

Jesse put his arm around Carl’s broad shoulder and guided them towards the stables. After a few uncomfortable minutes of Carl regretting saying anything at all, the pair leaning on the edge of the horse’s paddock, Jesse-Lee finally replied.

"You're right. We are pretending." Carl looked at him, surprised, "This is a world I don't think we can fix, but... Maybe we can start a new one in here. A small one, granted, but it's ours. Think of it like this, Carl: this place is only a break from the real world out there. Soon enough you're gonna be outside these fences doing supply runs or whatever, and you're gonna wish you were at story time. This is just a vacation Carl. You'll be in the real world again soon enough." This obviously gave Carl a lot of food for thought as they watched the horse mill about for a long few minutes. The muscled beast curiously trotted towards them, pushing its long nose into Jesse’s shoulder, looking for attention. "And yes, by the way."

"Huh?" Carl squinted in the sun as he looked up at Jesse-Lee.

"I do miss my gun. Sometimes I just put my hand on my belt, and panic for a moment 'cause it ain't there. Stupid, huh?"

"No. Sometimes... Sometimes I get nightmares," Carl admitted quietly like confessing to a crime, "And when it happened out there I always held my gun. But now, in here..."

"I get nightmares too, man." Carl wasn't overly surprised at this - what was surprising was Jesse-Lee telling _Carl_. "But don't you forget, you're just as mean with a knife as you are with a gun." Jesse-Lee caught Carl smiling beneath the hat. He could tell though, that Carl wasn't quite ready to let the gun thing go yet. "I knew a guy once-"

"Boyfriend?" Carl grinned at him cheekily, and dodged as Jesse took a swipe at him.

"Ha! He wished, man." Jesse-Lee looked off into the distance at Rick working the field, put an unlit cigarette between his lips, and leant his face against the horses. A strange look passed across his face. "He always kept a gun on him, but it was one of those old things you see in a western or something. Collected antique or whatever shit - between you and me though I think he was just compensating for something." Jesse-Lee drawled and Carl chuckled as his eyebrows twitched upwards, insinuatingly. "Anyway, they was bad guns you see, so old that the aim was off. Hell you couldn't even hit the target with that shit let alone kill someone you're aiming at-"

"Then what's the point of having them?" Carl asked, disgusted. Jesse-Lee suddenly found himself agreeing with Rick’s controversial decision - the kid needed a break from violence.

"I dunno man, guess he just thought they looked cool. He was so sure they couldn't do any harm he even let his nephews play with 'em. Like they was damn toys." He rolled the cigarette between his lips, "Never gave them to 'em loaded, but one day the kids just take a couple of the guns out the cabinet. Those ones _were_ loaded, but I guess they didn't know that. They was messing around and one of the kids, he points the gun at the cat and pulls the trigger."

"He killed the cat?"

"Nope. ‘Member, those guns don't shoot where they're supposed to. He points it at the cat, but he shoots the housekeeper dead, right between the eyes." Carl was silent for a moment.

"Is that why people don't want us having guns inside? In case we fire and it's loaded? We're not that st-!"

"No Carl, it's in case the kids take the gun out the cabinet." This shuts Carl up for a moment, and Jesse-Lee's not sure if he understands. "Not a lot of people in here know how to handle a gun like you do." - Flattery can't hurt - "The Council can't risk inexperienced people getting their hands on them, else someone could get hurt."

"What if- what if the Governor comes back? Or people worse than him?-"

"Then we know where the gun locker is, man... I don't like not having my gun on me, in fact I hate it. But keeping people safe isn't about just having a gun, it's about knowing when to put it down too."

"I think I get it." Carl mutters eventually. He was obviously still a little disgruntled, but Jesse-Lee reckoned he'd done an okay job at reasoning with him.

A rumble of engines drew both their heads up to the gate. Supply run returning. Jesse-Lee sauntered off to see his husband or fiancé or whatever they were now, and Carl couldn't help but feel grateful. Jesse-Lee seemed like the only one that wasn't telling Carl how wrong he was and how amazing this place was and how they didn't need guns anymore. Maybe that was why he liked him. Jesse didn't treat him like a child.

When he passed the other adults it was always 'hey kid' or 'hi there squirt' or 'hey cowboy'. It was always the Woodbury people that nicknamed him - none of the original group called him that. They'd seen him with a gun. They didn't call him 'man' either though, like Jesse-Lee. It made him feel like an equal. As Carl watched Jesse-Lee and Daryl 'bro-hug' (which was weird but maybe the felt the need to reinforce their masculinity to the Woodburians) he was very glad they didn't shoot him in the face, in that house so long ago.


	3. Mother Dearest

 

"You and Daryl ever think about having kids?”

 

_"You ever want a kid Dixon?"_

_"Nah... Well, maybe. You?"_

_"I'm not sure..."_

_"You'd be a shit parent."_

_"What-"_

_"Poor kid walking around with a nose like that? Hell I'd ditch his ass at the orphanage!"_

_"Shut your face Dixon!"_

_"You shut your face! I ain't ticklish asshole! Agh!"_

 

"Yeah, a couple of times."

"Really? You don't strike me as the type."

"Well, I mean we talked about it but, I think that's 'cause we didn't wanna screw it up like our old men did. Or turn out like Ed or somethin’.”

“You boys are better than he ever was.”

“Sorry, Carol I-“

“Don’t be sorry, sweetie. You’re speaking the truth.”

“Yeah… We only real started thinking about it seriously until after we got engaged though, ya know? That's when it starts to feel real."

_"Daryl think of it like this: you could get the chance to be the dad your Pa wasn't. Fix his dumb ass mistakes and make a better life for your kid than the one he gave you."_

_"Yeah but what if I screw it up like him too? Bet Merle wasn't born with ma Pa saying how he was gonna screw us over. Shit like that just happens even when you don't plan it! I mean, all that bull mostly happened 'cause he was a jackass but what if that shit’s genetic?"_

_"Daryl Dixon, you listen to me, you ain't nothin' like them! Hell, we might not even have kids-"_

_"Wait a sec, I thought you just said-"_

_"I know, I know, but let's start with that whole marriage thing first, huh?"_

 

"Weren't you worried? About what your families would say? I mean they didn't approve of you being gay, I'm pretty sure kids are out of that equation?"

"Really, we didn't get that far... I think we was more concerned about other things."

 

_"God! Just piss off Dixon!"_

_"I will when you stop breaking my damn furniture!"_

_"Your damn furniture? I paid for this shit too-"_

_"Hey!"_

_"Get lost!"_

_"What you gonna trash your momma's piano now too? Ya gonna wreck my huntin' gear, gonna break our guitar?"_

_"Fuck you, Dixon!"_

_"I can't do this anymore! You're so happy one minute, you're screamin' and cryin' the next, I can't handle it-!"_

_"What a guy can't have feelings?"_

_"This ain't feelings Jesse-Lee, you got a serious god damn problem!"_

_"My only problem right now is you!"_

_"Well it ain't my fault you're DNA's stacked against ya! Pretty much screwed on the head-case front! You had no chance!"_

_-_

_"Hey, Daryl?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"You really think it's in my genes? Think my crazy could be catchin if I had kids? Like my momma’s?"_

_"I didn't mean it, I's just mad..."_

_"I know, but seriously. Think that could be it?"_

_"I dunno, J. I dunno.”_

 

"Oh. Guess you wouldn't want kids now though, I mean, who would? Well, besides Lori..."

"Don't know what that chick was thinkin', rest her soul. Nah, I don't think no one like us could do it now. Back then ya had all your science and shit and Uncle Jimmy's credit card, but now it's like you'd have to ask a lady to risk her life for a kid you're only gonna take away from her later. It's not the same as it was."

"I get that."

"'Sides, we're happy now. Or happiest we can be. You know what I mean."

"C'mon sunshine, that's the next shift.”

 

_"One day Daryl, we're gonna be happy. Probably won't come in the way we want it to, life's just a bitch like that, but we're gonna get there. I know it. Sure, I might have to give up people I care about, and maybe you will too, but if that's what it takes to be with your dumb ass, I'd leave everything behind."_

_"Hey Jesse?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"I love you. Now shut up, and sleep."_

_"I love you too, Dixon. I love you too."_


	4. I Know Your Face

Ten. He counted ten. He’d heard their cars pull up further down the long drive way, but he hadn’t been able to gather up his pack in time to get out before they came in. He’d grown too comfortable here; dangerously comfortable. Ten people: six with guns.

He peaked the tiniest bit further around the bannister of the angled staircase that allowed him a decent view of the people below, unseen. Jesse could try to open a window, but chances were they’d see him – either dropping down or making a break for the tree line. He could wait them out but it was likely they were planning on spending the night. They would explore every inch and he would be found. He could try to hide in the rafters of the attic but if he fell asleep – which he was ought to do these days – he’d fall. Might even break through the rotted floor.

His options were running out, he had to make up his mind before the ten started clearing the upstairs, he-

Eleven. There was eleven.

An arrow scraped across the back of his left ear, strung tightly in a bow.

“Show me your hands.” The eleventh man growled lowly in a commanding voice from above Jesse’s crouched positon at the top of the stairs. Admittedly it was impressive – a rare few could sneak up on Jesse-Lee. “Now.”

Slowly, Jesse lifted his empty hands into the space above his head.

A tense pause, the adrenaline pumping rigorously through his system, and Jess turned knocking the crossbow violently out of the man’s hands away from his head, and cut across the figure’s face with a strong fist so hard his knuckles cried out. Jesse didn’t have time to jump across him and make for the window, because the man launched for him and they tumbled down the stairs, brawling. They scrapped viciously like crazed wolves, before a pause when Jesse managed to get pinned under the man.

It was not a man. It was his man, his Daryl, what was Daryl doing here, Daryl was alive, Daryl was looking at him, Daryl was breathing his name-

But his body was on autopilot and despite the numerous guns pointed at him, he flipped Daryl roughly. His hands raised to slap at him, but Daryl caught his wrists. Words his mother would bleach his mouth for saying, spewed like fire at Daryl and then he was crying. He was sobbing. He was falling forward into Daryl’s chest.

He didn’t care about their audience, because Daryl was alive. Jesse-Lee was alive. They were both alive, and they were alive together.

Daryl. His Daryl.


	5. Wheat Between the Teeth

Daryl had gone missing once. It was when they were both young, not long after Daryl’s momma had died. Jesse-Lee was the only one who’d noticed. Merle was in prison; Mr Dixon and Jesse’s dad were always at the bar; his own mum had her neck too far down the bottle to pay attention to him anymore. He remembered the way he had stubbornly decided it was up to him to find his best friend because papa always said the pigs don’t like our kind, so we watch out for each other.

Jesse-Lee ended up getting just as lost as Daryl. The first thing he did when he got back was dip his fingers in the peanut butter jar.

He wished he had peanut butter to give to Sophia when they found her. They would find her. Of course they would, he and Daryl had found plenty of the local kids lost in the woods, not to mention Rick and Shane were cops.

Rick didn’t seem bad so far, but Shane had a look about him – an unpleasant look.

What annoyed Jesse-Lee more than Shane’s Look or the China man screwing up the tracks, was the groups surprise at their willingness to help. Daryl had probably been an asshole while they were apart but God – it was like the others reckoned they had no humanity what so ever.

Jesse-Lee hadn’t wanted to split up the group knowing well enough how city folk were in the wild, but he wasn’t one of _them_ yet. He knew how irrelevant his opinion would be. It was the gun shot that made him regret not saying anything. He didn’t give a shit about Shane, not really Rick either, but that kid was on the small side. They didn’t want to lose another one.

The group looked panicked. Daryl said to keep moving. They kept moving.

 

\--- 

 

Hershel Greene was unpleasant. Daryl thought so too, if their shared look was to be interpreted correctly. It didn’t matter that the guy had saved Carl. In Jesse-Lee’s opinion, any man who still believed in a God was either stupid or crazy.

Jesse also didn’t like the way the farmer’s mouth twitched when Daryl rested his arm around his shoulders.

In fact the whole group was getting on his nerves. Lori, God, that woman was a nightmare. The blatant distaste in her voice when he pulled out a tattoo needle (he’d found it in one of the cars on the highway along with ink) almost sent him flying over the edge. Just to piss her off, he’d dragged Daryl down in front of him before the fire right next to Carl and started marking out a new design on the back of the man’s neck.

Shane unleashed a level of loathing that could only be surpassed by Jesse’s father-in-law. The man looked down on both him and Daryl, thankfully more red-neck related than sexuality. As much as he hated Lori, he hated Shane around Lori. Protective pack instinct, the kind Jesse and Daryl both felt when Merle would leer over a girl who didn’t like him.

Dale was too philosophical, wasn’t to the point enough, and he was sure the relative dislike was mutual.

T-Dog wouldn’t look at him beyond the basic ‘I can’t get over that Dixon’s gay and that’s his man’. Probably still reeling with the thought that the brothers of a neo-Nazi had saved his ass.

Carol wasn’t looking anyone in the face right now. He understood.

Carl was quite obviously ushered away from Jesse-Lee whenever the two veered too close for Lori’s liking. She probably thought she was being discrete. Bitch.

Andrea kept on trying to get inside his head or whatever. He avoided her when he could.

Glenn was awkward and Jesse didn’t have the patience to try by that point.

Too many people far too soon; he’d been alone since the start. He felt suffocated.

Rick was the only tolerable one. Logical and practical, but just emotional enough to be a good leader. He was meant for something like this. It made Jesse-Lee uneasy watching Shane try to grapple the power away from him.

All these people were meaningless anyway. Jesse-Lee was too encompassed in Daryl. Daryl holding him at night, Daryl hunting at his side, Daryl, Daryl, Daryl.

It was all that mattered.

 

\----

 

Daryl’s collar bone beneath his teeth.

Daryl’s fingers knotted in his hair.

Daryl’s mouth against his ear.

 

_Jesse’s chest pushed against his._

_Jesse’s legs wrapped round his waist._

_Jesse’s nose nudging against his neck._

 

The hot Georgia night air permeated every pore of the tent, but Jesse-Lee could’ve been in an oven for all he cared – he just wanted to get closer to Daryl. His heart felt like it was both melting and exploding at once, a tribal drum beat to match the pining of their souls. Closer, closer. Jesse lifted his face and he found himself drowning in Daryl’s eyes – it was a death he’d willingly go to if it meant drowning there. Daryl gently, softly, tilted him back to lay against the cool fabric beneath them.

Yes – he’d drown in Daryl for eternity if he could.

 

_Jesse-Lee. The name his heart beat its rhythm to. Jesse. They’d been apart for so long, he felt like he’d dreamt him up. His perfect hands around Daryl’s back, his perfect knees around Daryl’s waist, his perfect mouth against his own. It felt like his heart was spilling out of his chest and my God, he would pick it up and serve it to Jess-Lee if it meant he could be right here, in this moment for the rest of his life._

_Truly, he had no life to live without Jesse-Lee._


	6. The Reunion Tour: One Night Only

They hadn’t known what to expect from Terminus. It wasn’t this.

He was still woozy from the blood loss. He wasn’t able to fight as well as he should have been. He couldn’t help but feel responsible. They’d only rushed into Terminus because he had been so ill. At first, Jesse thought they might just kill him straight away – he was sick, he was missing half a limb, he was weak. But then their ring leader had taken one look at his thighs, groped him appreciatively and had him hauled off with the others. He got a good few kicks in to the guy’s face first though, he was a Dixon after all. He’d also partially ripped the ear off of the guy dragging him away from the inspection. Blood had never tasted so good.  

He’d passed most of their time in the container sitting propped up against Tara, discussing the tattoos he was going to give her when they got out until Rick, Michonne, Carl, and Daryl had walked in. He’d spent the following night leant back against the man’s chest. Daryl had kissed along the stump of his arm to just below the elbow where Maggie had amputated; it became a habit of comfort. What hurt more than his arm though, was having to listen to Daryl stubbornly sniff back tears. Tears of anger, tears of relief, tears of frustration, tears of loss; tears for everything they’d been through.

Jesse-Lee hadn’t cried though.

He _hadn’t_.

Shut up Tara, we’re not _cute_.


	7. No Grave Can Hold My Body Down

Always walking. Walking where? To newer pastures? He’d laugh if he had enough saliva left in his mouth to comfortably swallow. Jesse did feel guilty; he’d been relinquished of his load, dispersed between the others, so he could learn how to navigate the new balance losing half an arm had thrust upon him. He was too focused on that particular issue though to let it get to him. His arm, rather what was left of it, was infected.

It seemed like it would be okay, so Maggie had eased up on her regular check-ups, but without any water there wasn’t much she could do anyway. The singed veins were tracking black up his arm at an alarming rate. He didn’t know how much longer he could go without calling attention to it, but that would mean they’d sacrifice their drinking water for him. He couldn’t do that to them all.

In an almost humorous déjà vu, he felt himself falling back, and the figures around him tipping away out of his line of sight. There were far more faces above him though this time. The last thing he saw before passing out under the boiling sun was Daryl’s face haloed by the light filtering through the trees on the edge of the road, and he couldn’t think of a more perfect sight.

 

\---

 

In his unconscious state phrases filtered through the static of his mind.

“… Not dying!”

“… Fire must have delayed the infection…”

“Hey!”

“Your… Step aside.”

“Don’t…”

“… Die.”

Die. Dying. Death. It felt like he was already dead. Jesse had always imagined death as more pain, more fear, more dark, but that wasn’t what this felt like. His heart was so weightless in his chest, the heavy drag of each beat before the dull throb of pain, no longer there. He was okay.

The static in his ears tuned back into the world, his eyes following quickly after.

“Hey, J? Jess you’re going to be okay.”

“I think ’m dying Daryl.”

“No, no, listen, you’re fine, you’re- you’re fine.”

“You’re so cold.”

“You’re just hot, Jess.” Maggie sounded desperate. She was frantically emptying her water bottle onto a rag, pressing it against his forehead.

“Stop. Stop, Maggie, you need that.” His protest would’ve sounded stronger if he hadn’t coughed away the hack in his lungs between pauses.

There were so many people standing around him. How was he supposed to say goodbye to them all? What if he ran out of time before he got to Daryl?

“Hey Rick?”

“Yeah?”

“If I wasn’t I love with Daryl, I’d probably marry you.” Soft breaths of chuckles broke the lips of Rick, Jesse-Lee, and Daryl, the kind of laughter used to ward off pain. The others couldn’t bring themselves to laugh. Maggie fell onto his uninjured shoulder, giving up her attempt at cooling his face, and cried. Glenn pulled her back so Daryl could lean into his collar bone, each couple sitting hopeless on the tarmac.

“Yo, Carl, your old man ever decides to get it on you better make sure they surpass the high standards I’ve quite obviously set here.”

If Jesse-Lee didn’t know Carl, he would have expected him to cry a petulant ‘but you can’t die’. He did know Carl, and he knew how well Carl knew this world. Rick reached out to Jesse-Lee. They gripped hands tightly. Rick was crying just as desperately as Maggie and Glenn and Carl, who’d collapsed into Carol beside him. She was crying too.

“Carl?” Rick’s thick voice asked out – none of them wanted to regret not saying anything.

“It’s okay, Rick.” Sometimes you didn’t need to say anything at all.

Michonne came to kneel at his side, quietly. Once he and Daryl had spotted a wild cat padding through the forest. Neither had shot it, content to watch the beautiful creature pass. The way she moved always reminded Jesse of that cat. She pulled her sword off of her shoulder so she could kneel more comfortably.

“Watch the sword Mulan.” She sniffed back tears. She had become so good with emotion. “I know what you’re gonna say. ‘Technically Glenn’s Mulan’.” The man in question sobbed out a laugh into his wife’s back. “But Mulan’s hot and you’re way hotter than Glenn.” She kissed his forehead.

“Where’s Carol?” He murmured to Daryl, unable to swivel his head around to where he knew she was standing. Jesse dug his fingers into Daryl’s shirt, trying to ease the discomfort in his chest.

“Hey there, snookie.” Carol was crying too. He hadn’t seen her cry since Sophia.

“I missed you.”

“I know.”

“It’s good to see you again.”

“You too.”

What more was there to say? They already knew the important things. They knew the unimportant things too. She held his face in her soft hands for a minute, wiping the sweat from his brow, before pulling away to go to Carl again.

“Tara?”

“Yeah?” The girl looked surprised, tense, stepping out from behind Abraham, and the ones who felt like they were intruding. Jesse-Lee raised his fist out to her. Her eyes welled with tears and she stepped forward to fulfil the fist-bump he had rejected so many times before. He’d been wrong; Tara was one of the good ones.

Daryl had a hand cradling the back of skull, bringing their foreheads together. Their noses brushed. Daryl was quietly sobbing; he always knew how Jesse hated it when he cried. “I- I…” There was so much to say. So much to say and yet there was nothing to say. Why was that always the way with the people you loved?

Jesse-Lee crinkled his brow in thought.

They readjusted their grip on each other, pulling impossibly closer.

Jesse knew what to say.

“Hey Dixon? What do you think of Ty?”

“What?” Daryl’s tears dropped down his cheeks onto Jesse-Lee’s face below.

“Ty - If we were ever gonna have a boy. Marie for a girl?” Jesse knew Daryl was choking on the air in his throat, trying to force his mind into playing their final game of make-believe. It was something that started in the prison; sometimes they’d just begin talking about plans that would never become more than dreams now, plans they had for their old life: plans to buy that cabin in the woods, plans to get a dog, plans to change the god awful wallpaper that cursed their walls, plans to get hitched. They’d never gotten as far as children’s names before. That was uncharted territory far too painful to explore, a life snatched away from them before it had even begun. Jesse saw the resolution in his husband’s eyes; they’d play.

“You wanna call a kid down our side of town Ty?” The tears thickened on Daryl’s face, and Jesse felt his own tears glassing across his eyes. They distorted his vision before dropping down his face in a steady unrelenting stream.

“Well you got any better ideas asshole?” Then he _felt_ it. The pain in his shoulder pulsed so suddenly and so violently, he winced. Maggie was right – he was hot, he was roasting, he was boiling, and suddenly the cool fingers of death resting on his spine were a very welcomed reprieve.

“Thought you wanted to call the dog Ty.”

“Nah.” He breathed, trying to stifle the pain, “Think Merle sounds better for the dog.” That garnered a pained few syllables of laughter from Daryl, the movement of his chest unsettling Jesse’s amputated arm. He didn’t care – that sound, no matter how broken it became, would always be his favourite melody.

“So Marie, Ty and Merle, huh?”

“Yeah. Raise ‘em out in the woods like real hillbillies.”

“At that house?” _That_ house. Their house, the one they bought in their dreams, where Daryl built bikes in the garages and he trained hunting dogs in the woods. The one they came across on a hunt, hidden away in the crevices of the woods.

“Yeah. You know I went there when the world all ended.”

“I know, I – I know.” Daryl was holding him tighter now. He held back just as tightly through the agony trickling around his body.

“And I, I…”

“You slept on the roof so you could see the stars. Sometimes you’d look out over Atlanta and wonder if I’d made it.”

“And you’d made it. We made it Daryl.”

Jesse-Lee’s vision blurred into darkness no matter how hardly he tried to blink it away. The chirruping beats of his heart became lethargic. The pain slowly ebbed away until he exhaled, banishing the hurt and the sorrow and the desperation. “We made it.”


End file.
